From the Leadership Team

Book Week and a Love of Reading

Book Week is such an exciting time for schools around Australia and one that we at St Paul take great joy and pride in celebrating. Ms McLeod will share more next week once all of our celebrations have come to a close and so instead today, we wanted to share a little about why Book Week is held so dear in our school. 

Book Week is organised by the Children’s Book Council of Australia whose mission is ‘to connect, communicate, celebrate, and advocate for the value of stories’.  At St Paul, we also see that as a key part of our role as teachers. Through our approach to literacy, our teachers support children to develop a love of reading and, connected with this, a love of writing. As educators, we often speak with children or teachers from other schools and much of the time hear about children being disconnected with reading, not enjoying books, refusing to read and instead spending significant times on screens. In contrast to this, it is always energising to sit in our classrooms, from our Mid-Year Receptions all the way to Year 6, and hear children sharing a love of reading, talking about their favourite books and engaging in deep, rich conversations about characters, themes and ideas. This is especially evident during Book Week and in our Book Week Parade today, where we saw almost every child in every year level dress up as a character from a book and share their passion for reading with others in our school. 

Reading and books are such powerful learning tools. They help us communicate effectively to share our ideas and to hear others’ ideas and they play an instrumental role in developing our ability to see and appreciate other perspectives. From the beginning of Mid-Year Reception, our children are celebrated and encouraged as readers, capable of making meaning from books and being able to talk about themselves as readers. We are so proud of all of our readers, and we are so grateful for our amazing library team of Ms McLeod and Mrs Madigan and our classroom teachers for all of the hard work, encouragement and joy that they pour into creating the amazing reading culture at St Paul. We also thank you for all of the support you give at home as parents by reading with your children, listening to them read, talking with them about their favourite books and supporting them with amazing Book Week costumes.  

Well done everyone! 

Parent Teacher Learning Conversations 

We are only 2 short weeks away from our Term 3 Parent Teacher Learning Conversations. These are incredibly valuable opportunities for our teachers to share information with you about how your child is developing this year and for you to share any questions or concerns you have with your child’s teacher. 

Please refer to the information included about how to book these sessions and secure your spots now so that we can continue working with you to support your child’s learning and wellbeing at school as effectively as possible.